BRASÍLIA — The first time the lights went out in her presidential palace, Dilma Rousseff grimaced. The next time, she rolled her eyes. The third time, she jumped out of her chair, demanding that subordinates find out what was going on.
“This was my area,” she fumed during an interview, pointing out that she had made Brazil’s electricity grid a top priority before she was suspended last month as president. “I don’t know why this is happening.”
With Ms. Rousseff stripped of her authority, a sense of powerlessness and indignation pervades the Palácio da Alvorada, the cavernous residence where she is allowed to stay while the fight to oust her once and for all grinds on in the Senate.